Help:Manual of Style
Purpose DF wiki is here to provide information on the Dresden Files series; as such this manual of style is intended to provide a way to organize said information in an ordered and homogeneous way. If something is not covered by the manual, editors are welcome to use their judgement and are encouraged to raise the point with admins. Editors are also encouraged to voice their doubt and disagreements with the manual. If their points meet approval from other editors and admins, they'll make their way in the manual of style. It is worth familiarizing with the different rules; if in doubt an admin will be available to help. Material Generally, only material from the Dresden Files is allowed in main space; though properly referenced information from other sources can be used for minor topics, such as Hotel Sax or University of Oklahoma where there is not enough information from the DF to make meaningful pages. DF wiki is not a crystal ball and we can't know if or when future titles will be published; speculation about them is therefore not allowed in main space. It is, however, welcome in blogs and in discussions. Language American english is the language of the Dresden files, therefore it will be the language of this wiki. Even though both past and present tense are currently used in many pages without consideration for consistency, present tense is to be preferred over past tense, so editors are encouraged to convert past to present, unless there's a good reason not to: i.e. a character is dead or an incident has happened before the beginning of the series - "Restoration of Faith". Pages Information present in the book should be summarized succinctly and clearly in many pages, which can be of various different types, with different layouts for each type. Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of pages: 1) describing a story, 2) describing a character, 3) describing everything else. Story pages Story pages, such as Storm Front, typically include: * a mandatory short lede, giving information about the title, publication details, number of chapters. is to be included here, as complete as possible. References may be required. * an optional Blurb section, proposing the blurb's content. References are not required. * a mandatory Plot section, describing succinctly the novel's or story's plot. References are not required. * for novels, a Plot points introduced section, summarizing what of importance happens in the novel. References are not required. * an Other media section, presenting what graphic novels, audiobooks, electronic media are available. References are not required. * an optional Trivia section. Notes and miscellanea should be included here. References, if available, should be to outside sources. * a Notes section, if needed. It will be explained later. * a References section, almost always needed. It will be explained later. * a See also section, with links to pages relevant but not previously piped. * an External links section, with links to external pages relevant to the topic. Each page should be self-contained, and must avoid referring to future stories; only exception being the "followed by" line of the infobox. However, it is up to the judgement of the editor to include a plot point that will be relevant later on in the series, and influences future events. Page titles are in italics, i.e. Storm Front, The Warrior for novels and novelettes, and double quotes for shorter fiction and graphic novels, i.e. "Heorot", "Wild Card". Each page should be self-contained; the "Books" category and template need to be added to the page. Mention of still unpublished future stories are to be avoided in mainspace; they're welcome in Discussions and personal blogs. Character pages Character pages, such as Harry Dresden, describe what is known about characters, and typically include: * a mandatory short lede, including the character name, nicknames, gender, species, affiliation and first appearance. References and notes may be required. * a Description paragraph, presenting the physical chracteristics of the character. References are required. Ideally it is supposed to be short and succinct, but in practice it can wind up being fairly long. * a Biography paragraph, presenting a biography of the character. It can be quite lenghty and is to be chronologically ordered. Mentions of books or stories are not mandatory, but references are required. Either Description or Biography may be omitted if there is not enough information and the other paragraph is present. Again, it should ideally be short, but in practice it can be very long. * a number of optional paragraphs about Possessions, Spells, physical or magical characteristics. They may be divided in titled subparagraphs, and references are required. * a mandatory In the series paragraph. Each novel/story's information is to be presented in its own subparagraph. References are required. * an optional Trivia section. References, if available, should be to outside sources. * a Notes section, if needed. * a References section, almost always needed. * a See also section, with links to pages relevant but not previously piped. * an External links section, with links to external pages relevant to the topic. Each page should be self-contained; the "Characters" category and template need to be added to the page. Other pages Other pages, such as Nevernever, Magic, Wizard, describe what is known about any other subject, and typically include: * a mandatory short lede, broaching the topic. References and notes may be required. * a Description paragraph, presenting the topic. Might be lengthy, mentions of books or stories are not mandatory, and references are required. * a Biography description, presenting a succinct biography of the character. It can be quite lenghty and is to be chronologically ordered. but references are required. Either Description or Biography may be omitted if there is not enough information exists and the other paragraph is present. * a number of optional paragraphs about specific details, which may be divided in titled subparagraphs, and references are required. * a mandatory In the series paragraph. Each novel/story's information is to be presented in its own subparagraph. References are required. * an optional Trivia section. References, if available, should be to outside sources. * a Notes section, if needed. * a References section, almost always needed. * a See also section, with links to pages relevant but not previously piped. * an External links section, with links to external pages relevant to the topic. References and notes References Information added should always be referenced to their origin in the relevant book or story, as should information coming from interviews, provided by publishers, etc. It is fairly simple to do so; the relevant piece is to be tagged in one of four forms: * for the first refrence to a novel, the tag XX book title, ch. YY is to be used. DF stands for Dresden files, XX is the serial number of the book, YY is the chapter number and XX book title is the title of book XX. So, Storm Front, ch. 1 is a reference to the first chapter of Storm Front * for the first reference to a story, the tag XX story title is to be used. XX is the capitalized acronym resulting from XX story title. So "DF-B" for Backup], and "DFIMBT" for "It's My Birthday, Too". In the reference, titles of longer pieces, such as Aftermath are italicized, while shorter pieces, such as "Love Hurts", are in "quotation marks". * for the first reference to outside material, such as interviews, articles, movie clips, etc. the tag to source material" "short description" is to be used. ZZ is a two-letter indicative of the website name: "YT" for Youtube, "RD" for Reddit, etc, XXXX is a very short description of the information provided. * any further instance is to be referenced by its name: , , or . Reference tags appear in the article as an automatically assigned number, such as 1, 2, 3, etc., where they've been inserted. Their content is parsed and shown by the tag, which is to be inserted at the end of each article, in a paragraph of its own, named "References". References The reflist tag can be modified as , where n''' is the number of columns the references are divided in. It is often the last paragraph; "See also" and "External links" being the only paragraphs following it. Footnotes Footnotes are a variant of references, useful when it is necessary or useful to insert information, such as the numerous Chicago landmarks (i.e., the Field Museum of Natural History) used as locales for the series, and the many faeries based on their folklore counterparts (i.e. Erlking), which is not coming from the Dresden Files, but is needed to clarify the DF material. Most often such information is to be found on Wikipedia, but a suitable non-commercial websites, such as the Field Museum of Natural History, can be used. Wikipedia is referenced with a tag as follows Pagename - wikipedia; '''WP stands for wikipedia, while PN stands for a two or three-lettered aronym identifying the requested page. Websites other than wikipedia are referenced as follows url" "website name"; PN is a two or three-letter acronym indicating the site name. Like references, footnotes appear as numbered tags in the text where they're inserted, while their content is shown by the tag, to be inserted in a paragraph called "Notes", placed just before "References". Categories Pages deal with many different topics: stories, characters, magic, objects, etc; categories are what enable readers and editors to make sense of pages, order them and navigate them. For the most part, they have already been developed and set in place; there is currently no need nor reason to modify their layout. Categories are nested in a tree: pages are categorized in lowest-level categories, which are categorized in higher-level categories, and so on, up to the highest category: Category:The Dresden Files. How exactly a page is categorized depends on its content, and how the tree is built from there depends on the affinity among the various categories. The best way to learn it is to navigate it; however, two categories, Category:Characters and Category:Books, will be explained here. Category:Characters is the category dealing with characters. Main characters are present or mentioned in most if not all books and stories, recurring characters includes those present in a lower number of stories. Minor characters appear only in one novel/story, and mentioned characters are only referred to indirectly. The tree is, as such, fixed, but character can be moved from one category to the other, according to the ebb and flow of canon. The boundary, especially, between Main characters and Recurring characters is far from sharp and precise. Thomas Raith, John Marcone and Michael Carpenter might certainly be moved from Recurring to Main, but in order to do so, a consensus from the community should be established. Category:Books includes all (i.e. Storm Front) of the series. Shorter fiction, novellas (i.e. Backup), short stories (i.e. "Love Hurts", are subcategories of these. Each book, or story, is, of course, the main page of each subcategory. Characters, locales, events, etc., will be also categorized by book; wherever they appear or are mentioned. Other categories will not be mentioned here; admins will be happy to explain their rationale. It is, however, worth mentioning how categories are ordered on a page. Descriptive categories come first; whatever character a person is, or locale, or object, etc. Book appearance categories come later, in chronological order. Details are complicated and arbitrary: but admins are happy to help. See Harry Dresden and Nevernever as examples. Last detail; the template will sort pages in each category. sorts the page by its page name - i.e. "Nevernever". sorts the page by last name first, and first name second - i.e. "Dresden, Harry". Its use is mandatory! Future titles As mentioned on the main page, we strongly discourage mention of future titles in this wiki's mainspace. Skin Game has been published in 2014, and more years have elapsed since than between any other two books in the series. Editors should therefore restrict mention of them in their personal blogs and in discussions. Blogs Blogs are userspace pages available to editors for anything that does not fit main pages; ideas, comments, hypothesis, etc, including future titles of the Dresden Files. Unless there is an egregious problem, such as violations of ToS, personal attacks to other users, promotional content, they are free from admin intervention, who, should it be necessary, are going to issue a warning first. Discussions Discussions have been recently renovated; thanks to staff and to Ursuul. This is the place for discussing anything interesting or useful about the DF; projected books, release dates, problems with pages, wiki organization, etc. Discussion threads are subject to less restrictions than main pages, and admins will take part in them like any other user. Only administrative intervention on the discussions themselves will be relative to important breaches of ToS, promotional content, personal attacks and such.